My Night With Saint-Exupéry – a Christmas Carol from France

Entrance to the Hotel Du Grand Balcon Toulouse

Goodbye 2020! You will not be missed. At a time when morale is low and with the prospect of a lonely Christmas for many, I’m hoping this blog will remind us of some of the things that make life worth living.  Its inspiration is writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In his most famous book, The Little Prince, banned, like his others, under the Vichy regime, he has written a story which has moved and comforted millions of readers since its publication in 1943. Its themes – love and friendship, loneliness and loss– strike a special chord today.

Le Petit Prince

‘On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.’  ‘It is only with the heart, not the eyes, that one sees clearly.’ Through the book’s best-known quotation and through the humanist philosophy expressed in his other works, in particular Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars), dedicated to Henri Guillaumet, Saint-Exupéry opens our hearts to the wonder of many things – the miraculous bond that grew between a small inhabitant from asteroid B612 and an aviator stranded in the desert; our planet and its place in a vast universe; our custodial duties towards it–the protection of nature, roses and gardens; our desire to go further, to explore, to learn, to surpass ourselves; the power of imagination which fires both scientific and artistic creation; the memory of where we come from, and the fact that all of us children of stardust must face an end to our earthly existence and the sadness of parting.

Saint-Exupéry’s connection to Toulouse is well-known. This was the place where he began an apprenticeship which was to make him into a great writer and a somewhat less-great aviator, the place where he forged unbreakable bonds with comrades who would help to shape his destiny. Pierre-Georges Latécoère was the visionary businessman who, in 1918, laid the cornerstone of French civil aviation at a small airfield on the outskirts of the city, launching what would become one of the world’s legendary airlines, the Lignes Aériennes Latécoère, later known simply as ‘La Ligne’, then ‘l’Aéropostale’ .  His head of operations was Didier Daurat, a man revered by those he trained in the importance of their mission – delivering the mail to France’s overseas territories and beyond. In the modern world where an electronic Christmas card reaches its destination in a second it’s hard to imagine how eagerly, sometimes desperately, letters were awaited by people living thousands of miles apart at a time when transport by road and sea might take weeks, months even.

View from Saint Exupéry’s room, Hotel du Grand Balcon copyright Gordon Seward

Daurat’s aviators were a larger-than-life bunch of daredevils who risked their necks daily on flights across the Pyrenees, Spain and the Mediterranean to West Africa in flimsy aircraft with rudimentary instruments and cockpits open to the elements (120 died in the service of the line). When, in May 1930, Jean Mermoz, one of the greatest pilots in history, crossed the Atlantic from Senegal to Brazil, a distance of 3450 km in a flight time of 21 hours and 15 minutes, the way was open for Aéropostale’s South American network. Passionate about their vocation, these men also had an appetite for life and l’amour (toujours l’amour), prompting Daurat to arrange for them to lodge at a respectable boarding house/pension, Le Grand Balcon, in the heart of the pink city. Daurat was counting on Lucie, Henriette and Risette Marquez, the genteel sisters who ran the place, to keep his young hotbloods in check. Instead, the sisters fell under the charm of their lodgers, and, seduced by their tales of exotic lands, vast deserts, jagged mountain peaks and violent storms, ‘forgot’ to charge them for their dinners and turned a deaf ear to the creaking floorboards as the aviators, their giggling inamoratas tossed over one shoulder, tiptoed to their rooms for forbidden nights of love from which they would emerge bleary-eyed at dawn to catch the no. 10 tram to Montaudran.

Left to right Saint-Ex, Guillaumet and Mermoz Salon of l’hôtel du Grand Balcon

In December 2017 I was able to test those creaky floorboards for myself. Santa (in the shape of the MDM) had brought me a marvellous present – a night in the Suite de Saint-Exupéry. As we passed through the foyer of the hotel  I heard the drift of a ghostly tango from the salon where the lodgers used to push back the furniture for impromptu dance evenings, and where today three huge photographs dominate one wall:  Jean Mermoz, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Henri Guillaumet, the most famous members of the band whose exploits, like those of their American counterparts years later – Chuck Yeager, Gus Grissom, John Glenn – became the stuff of legends (pause while I blow a kiss star-wards to the great Chuck, who died this month aged 97) . Mermoz was the poster-boy; nicknamed the Archangel after emerging unscathed from the wreck of a plane in the Andes; his wavy, swept-back hairstyle, ‘la coupe Mermoz’, became le must-have in barbershops the length and breadth of France (we have a dashing photograph of the MDM’s dad sporting it.)

His room was number 20, Saint-Ex was on the floor above in 32 where, on one notorious occasion, his workmates found him asleep in the bath, a book floating next to him, and had to drag him out so he wouldn’t miss the tram to work and incur the wrath of Daurat.

Terre des Hommes English title: Wind Sand and Stars

A propensity to forget the time was one his most notable characteristics; his absent-minded dreaminess and habit of jotting down notes for his books while flying led to many an incident; as Henry Alias, his unit commander in 1940, remarked ‘When the flight is normal, Saint-Exupéry is dangerous; given complications, he’s brilliant’; for the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, he was a man who came into his own  ‘to the degree to which he (ran) into danger.’  In short,  Saint-Ex possessed that quality known later as ‘the right stuff’– a coolheaded resourcefulness that got him out of many a scrape .

For his first, crucial interview with Didier Daurat in 1926, he turned up an hour late, a crime which would normally have led to him being sent packing but for some reason didn’t. Daurat, ex-fighter pilot and hero of Verdun, was a stern, inflexible man who believed in duty  and abhorred pride and pretentiousness. He was able, though his own unshakeable beliefs, to instil in his team the desire to surpass; his pilots were an elite, the brightest and best. Joseph Kessel wrote that, for Daurat ‘the mail had become religion.’ Saint-Ex, recalling that first interview said ‘I learned that any delay is a dishonour regardless of the reasons.’ He left an indelible portrait of him in his novel Vol De Nuit, published in 1931, bearing the  dedication ‘A Monsieur Didier Daurat’.

Mermoz, a pilot with 600 flying hours beneath his belt, never forgot the humiliation of his first test flight where he launched into a dazzling aerobatics display to impress the great man. Coming in to land, he saw no trace of Daurat.

‘You’d better pack your bags’ said Rozes, an old hand standing at the side of the runway.

‘What have I done?’ stammered Mermoz.

Seeing the chief coming out of the hangar he rushed over.

‘Pleased with yourself?’ asked Daurat. ‘We don’t need acrobats here. Get yourself off to the circus.’

Daurat relented, but not after giving the scarlet-faced young man a terrible dressing down which he never forgot.  Kessel later asked Daurat for his version of what happened.

‘I saw straight away that Mermoz was first class,’ he told Kessel. ‘But what he’d demonstrated was vanity and individualism. In order for La Ligne to work, we didn’t need that; it was a unity, a corps, not a showcase for individuals.’

Room 32 dans son jus

On the night of December 4th 2017, as the MDM unlocked the door to Room 32, I was remembering all those stories, and trying to keep calm at the idea I was about to  step into a page of history. I perhaps gave my gallant escort a little shove as I shot past – straight into a time-warp. The iconic hotel has been carefully modernised, leaving Room 32 dans son jus, as it was when its famous occupant left it.

the marble fireplace room 32

Floor-to-ceiling windows, bare floorboards, the bed with its original brass and iron bedstead, the ancient black marble fireplace complete with art deco clock, the mismatched nightstands and Art Deco armoire. And what was behind the wooden screen with its embroidered panels? A bidet, was what, with a retro washbasin on the wall next to it.

From an early age Saint-Exupéry had taken to the world of books like a duck to water, reading them, writing them and doings his own illustrations in the margins. In her fascinating biography, Stacy Schiff describes how he would write late into the night, falling asleep then waking at his desk, head on his arms. Looking around that night, our eyes were drawn to a writing table, set in front of a corner window with a view of the main square and the rose-coloured 18th century Capitole building. It was essentially the same view Saint-Ex would have seen, raising his head from his arms, except that the façade of the Capitole that night was glowing electric blue in the Christmas lights, and the lamplit square was covered in market stalls.

Anyone behind there?

The MDM was hoping for a ghost as the clock struck the midnight hour.  I’m not sure what I was hoping for (a man in a helmet and goggles?) The MDM swears he saw his  ghost. I didn’t get the man or the goggles but there was an undeniable frisson, something in the air that alerted the senses, a sort of psychic electricity… As the street noises faded and I drifted in and out of sleep I fancied there appeared among the shadows on the ceiling dancing black and white images from that golden age. There, in the old salon, three floors below,  was a nervous Saint-Ex on the eve of his maiden flight to deliver the mail, begging the help of Guillaumet, ace pilot of the Ligne, more skilled even than Mermoz. The two were plotting the route at a lamplit table covered with maps. The jagged mountain peaks, swirling clouds,  treacherous turbulence and magnetic storms which shook the frail aircraft like a leaf–all disappeared, magically transformed by Guillaumet, ‘the poet-guide’ who was showing Saint-Ex ‘his kingdom’,  the Pyrenees and Spain, and the path through them with its welcoming landmarks –  a row of orange trees here, a quiet brook there, a herd of sheep, a farmer on a remote mountain top.

In that moment a life-long friendship was born, and henceforth Saint-Ex would exercise his two passions, flying and writing, in thrall to the siren song of foreign landscapes, the vast remoteness of the Saharan desert and the harsh majesty of the South American continent, in the company of a fellowship of men who also had the stars in their eyes.

Il tomba doucement comme tombe un arbre

The idyll would come to a sordid end in the early thirties. The man who loved to write and fly would meet his death somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea in 1944. In an article in The New York Times, Schiff writes “rarely have an author and a character been so intimately bound together as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince…the two remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky”.

It’s impossible to squeeze just a few of these inspiring adventures into one blog. They will pop up again next year, to keep things in perspective. But I’d like to finish with a reference to Vol de Nuit /Night Flight, and its unforgettable descriptions of the anguish of  men on lonely flights through the blackness of the South America night, racing to deliver the mail between Buenos Aires and Patagonia, Chile and Paraguay, and, fearing the worst, longing to see amid the claustrophic darkness a glimpse of dawn appearing on the horizon  ‘like a beach of golden sand’.

It’s a feeling we can all empathise with as 2020 draws to a close. But as another great Frenchman, Victor Hugo reminded us ‘Même la nuit la plus sombre prendra fin, et le soleil se lèvera.’

‘Even the darkest night will draw to an end, and the sun will rise.’

The Cowshed at Christmas

From The Cowshed on a Hilltop in The Tarn – here’s to the dawn of a new year and a brighter future. Joyeux Noel et Bonne Année to one and all – oh, I almost forgot my present to readers -Books 1 2 3 of the French Summer Novels are all FREE for a bit of sea sex and sun escapism (26,27 and 28th December) – just click on the book covers to the left.

PS A special thought for those who lost dear ones this year; and for the never-to-be-forgotten James Lawrence, who left us bereft one December night 24 years ago. Apart from being a wonderful father he was also a keen astronomer, who, one night, aged 70, in the service of his passion, shinned up a concrete lamp-post and affixed a homemade cardboard shade around its offending orange light so as to better contemplate the beauties of the constellations.  

 

O Toulouse… Gordon Seward at the Espace Bouquières in la ville rose

View from Saint Exupéry’s room, Hotel du Grand Balcon copyright Gordon Seward

The stunning painting above is by artist Gordon Seward, currently exhibiting at the Espace Bouquières in Toulouse. Gordon’s work has been shown at prestigious venues around Europe, as well as in the UK and the US, and has been the subject of glowing articles by critics and collectors. But Toulousains are specially blessed (hooray!) as Gordon, for the last fifteen or so years, has returned each summer like a swallow to his adoptive city, thrilling locals and visitors alike with his latest creations. The fact that it was pouring down on the first morning did not deter devoted collectors from queuing up early in order to rush in and bag a goodie.

Some of the paintings on display at the Espace Bouquières 2018, copyright Gordon Seward

Bursting with beauty and emotion, luminous, vibrant, dramatic, bold, dancing, joyful, fluid, free–these are some of the expressions that spring to mind as you stand before the paintings. Swiss soprano Brigitte Hool, on a visit to the pink city to perform in The Magic Flute, stepped into the gallery one day and looked around. ‘Can I,’ she said to the surprised artist, ‘sing for your paintings?’ Which she then proceeded to do, celebrating them with a Puccini aria.*

What a perfect reaction.

Lacking the adequate tessitura to do a Mme Hool, or the springy calves to convey my admiration through a series of Nureyev-like leaps, I will try to express my own feelings in this short blog. (Obviously, I’d like to write a long blog, a very long blog, but…)

Art critics have described the artist’s work as ‘an ode to life’, ‘a source of constant pleasure’. Seward is ‘a colour magician’, a ‘new Fauvist’, ‘his explosive painting (bringing us) the fearless Mediterranean spirit and freedom.’ Gordon himself, in his autobiography Why I Paint, talks about the importance of first learning the rigorous craft of drawing, then describes ‘letting go’, allowing free rein to his intuition as a way of spurring the paintings ‘to bubble and sing’. He cites Matisse (one of his idols) as someone who ‘determined in contemporary painting the fundamental elements of joy and humility’ which ‘seem to me now more revolutionary and necessary than ever.’

Alors à l’heure, poems by Cécile Toulouse aka La Muse

This year, along with his wife and constant Muse, poet, lyricist and translator Cécile Toulouse, he has been working on an exciting new concept, a limited series of signed ‘Digigraphies’, high-quality lithographs using a technique which allows a dazzling range of colours. The theme chosen for this first series is ‘Toulouse’, in particular the city’s historical connection with some of the most amazing chapters in French aviation.

Readers of this blog will be only too familiar with my own attachment to la ville rose where I lived for many years, as well as my enthusiasm for this period of its history**. In the 1920s and 30s, Pierre-Georges Latécoère developed what was to become one of the world’s most legendary airlines (which incidentally will celebrate the centenary of its birth at Montaudran this year).

Writing desk and window looking out over la place du capitole, room 32, chambre de Saint-Exupéry, Hôtel du Grand Balcon

His aviators and mechanics were a larger-than-life bunch of daredevils, poets and writers, who risked their necks on every mission. Passionate about their vocation, they also had an appetite for life which included l’amour, toujours l’amour, prompting Didier Daurat, head of operations at the airline, to arrange for these ardent young men to lodge at the Hôtel du Grand Balcon on the corner of the Place du Capitole, a respectable boarding house run by the three genteel Marquez sisters. This, he assumed, would keep them in check (it didn’t–the sisters were pussy cats who adored their lodgers).

Both of the Sewards are keen historians, also fascinated by the city’s association with these fluttering starts in aviation. Gordon first set up his easel in Saint-Exupéry’s former quarters at the hotel, Room 32, many years ago, before the place was renovated.*** His canvases show the view looking out from the window towards the famous 18th century Capitole building. In January 2015 he returned to paint the moving scenes as people gathered on the square to hold a vigil after the Charlie Hebdo massacres (this is the subject of one of the ‘Digigraphies’).

This obligation of the artist to keep the flame of art burning more brightly than ever in ‘the heart of darkness’ recurs in his autobiography. He talks of Matisse, refusing to leave Nice during WW2, continuing to paint as bombers roared overhead.

To hold in your hand a brush or a gun. To arm yourself with a pen or a dagger. A choice brought before us every day, as it always has been.

Narrow alleys in old Toulouse

And so it was, dear readers, that this weekend the Maître de Maison and myself sallied forth on our annual pilgrimage to the Espace Bouquières (alas we have missed a couple over the years), treating ourselves to a day of joy and nostalgia in la ville rose, soaking up the dusty heat and southern ambiance, strolling arm in arm through the narrow streets, past café terraces and fountain-splashed squares packed with locals and tourists.

Toulouse has changed dramatically. It continues to change with terrifying speed: the gigantic aerospace industry, the ‘Silicon Valley’ IoT (Internet of Things), the sci fi projects for flying taxis, driverless buses, the Hyperloop tunnel which will shoot trains between Toulouse and Montpelier in 20 minutes. Buying lamb chops at the Maison de l’agneau in the Marché Victor Hugo (opened in 1892), we exchanged reminiscences with the butcher.

Pace du Capitole, evening, cafés under the arcades

Twenty thousand new arrivals each year, he told us, making neat wax paper packets. A far cry from the ‘old days’ when chansonnier Claude Nougaro penned his famous hymn to the city of his birth, ‘a flower of coral watered by the sun’ (have the Kleenex ready as you listen):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI2uZPV4fEo

Celebrating the old and the new at the Espace Bouquières, the artist and his Muse welcome visitors, answer questions, talk about art, music, history, literature and  life in general, including the trendy barber doing hipster haircuts just down the street. They are always, unfailingly, ‘disponible‘, at the disposal of all who come to buy or simply to look. And all around, on every wall, is a joyous ‘ode to life’.

What a treat.

The exhibition finishes on June 16th, but the four ‘Digigraphies’ will continue to be displayed in Toulouse at the Magasin Trait, 4 rue Vidal. There are also permanent exhibitions in Marseilles (Galerie Grossi), Lille (Atelier Kolorma), and Montauban (Art et Patrimoine).

Unlucky mortals far from these cities can amuse their bouches at:

http://www.gordonseward.fr

O Toulouse!

The 18th century Capitole building at the heart of Toulouse, la ville rose, Occitania’s capital city

 

Detail from a drawing by Gordon Seward, property of the author, copyright Gordon Seward
Detail from a drawing by Gordon Seward, property of the author, copyright Gordon Seward

PS: For the last several weeks I have been going through the elephantine birth pangs of finishing off Villa Julia, the last book in the French Summer series. In this I have been helped by a kindly fairy godmother who popped up from cyberspace and offered to help. Her name is Paula Heron Phillips(I hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning her in this blog) and she has been reading drafts, wielding sticks and carrots and giving excellent feedback. All through the sheer goodness of her reader’s heart. Every Indie author should be so lucky. I am so grateful. Merci Paula!!!!!xxxx. Anyway, I was happy to escape from the maternity ward for a day, put on my city togs and swan off with the Maître de Maison to see the Expo Seward. Especially as, along with the formal card, there was a more personal (and cheekier) invitation (see below) from the little bird which features in many of the artist’s paintings in various forms.  I like to think this one was the nightingale the ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’ which had serenaded us in our garden all through May, charming many a magic casement and causing us to hold up the mobile phone countless times in an attempt to record its magic notes (all we got was crackle). Here it is.

O for a draft of vintage! A beaker full of the warm South…

PPS Villa Julia will be out in …the future….

*recounted in Why I Paint (available from the artist’s website)

**

https://laurettelong.com/the-music-of-the-spheres/

http://www.frenchvillagediaries.com/2018/03/lazy-sunday-in-france-with-laurette-long.html

***

https://grandbalconhotel.com